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September 17, 2005 |
Most the New Orleans Jesuits went to St Charles College novitiate/spirituality center and Our Lady of the Oaks retreat house, both in Grand Coteau, La. Two Jesuit brothers have remained at Ignatius Residence, our retirement home, to keep the generator going and care for the facility.
Fr Jim Deshotels, a nurse practitioner, moved to the Superdome and remained there through the first harrowing week, then moved to Dallas with staff of the New Orleans Health Department; he continues to work with the evacuees in Dallas.
On September 5, most of the New Orleans Jesuits in the apostolates began moving to new assignments—the largest numbers to Strake Jesuit in Houston and Spring Hill College. Others are being dispersed to help in parishes or schools, to attend to their own health needs, or to other assignments.
Fr Robert Anderson SJ, in frail health at the Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans at the time of the hurricane, was missing despite multiple efforts to locate him through various agencies.
However there was a happy resolution to the search for Fr. Anderson! He was found in a nursing home in Lake Charles, LA. Danny Tesvich, who completed the First Studies Program at Loyola U Chicago last Spring was the one who succeeded in tracking down Bob.
Two or three Jesuit priests and several novices are doing pastoral visits from St Charles College to the evacuees in the shelters in Lafayette, La. Three other Jesuits from Loyola have been missioned to Manresa Retreat House to do pastoral outreach to evacuees in the shelters in Baton Rouge, while preparing to return to the campus as soon as it is reopened and then to assist returning faculty and staff in their own readjustment to a very changed city.
At St Charles Parish in Grand Coteau, there are 30-40 evacuees at the Thensted Center, its social services arm, and 60 additional students added to the elementary school population at St Ignatius School. Manresa Retreat House in Convent, La, has also been a temporary home to aid workers.
In the New Orleans Province, the high school and provincial office building have five feet of water on the first floor, meaning substantial long-term damage, clean-up, and renovations, if possible, when the waters finally recede.
Loyola University has some lesser tree damage and is being maintained by a skeleton staff on intermittent generators, but no real flooding. The adjoining Holy Name Church seems intact, and the rectory and elementary school nearby may have very moderate water damage.
Our downtown church seemed to be above the waters when we evacuated, but the rectory next door already had a foot of rising water on the first floor and will require major renovations, if it is usable. The adjoining Father Tompson Center for the homeless would be likewise flooded. The nearby Nativity school Good Shepherd may have escaped flood damage. The Jesuit Volunteer community in New Orleans has been relocated to Mobile for now. Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, sustained some tree damage, but has reopened for the fall semester. The Loyola Jesuit Community villa house in Waveland, Mississippi, was totally destroyed.
We are in the process of relocating our province offices during the interim to Grand Coteau; the new address is Jesuit Province Offices, PO Box 218 (174 Church Street), Grand Coteau, LA 70541
New Orleans has undergone a serious trauma that will continue for years to come. We soon will go through a rebuilding that will change the face and shape of the city. It will be important that Jesuits and Jesuit ministries be a part of that rebuilding so that the best of our community will come to the fore and so that the city that arises from the floodwaters will be one where all the people can truly be at home. [Source: Fred Kammer SJ, Provincial of the New Orleans Province]
Danielle Smith (left) and Tara Templeton, both sophomores at Loyola University New Orleans, pick up supplies Monday afternoon [September 5] at Spring Hill College's "campus shop," established to help students who were impacted by the storm. Local businesses, along with alumni, students and friends, donated clothing, hygiene supplies, blankets, linens, and other necessities available free for students returning to school or enrolling from a school affected by the hurricane. (Photo by Greg Walker, Spring Hill College) |
The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) has sought ways to accommodate Loyola University New Orleans students at other Jesuit schools. The 27 other Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States have agreed to admit Loyola students as visiting students for the fall semester, with the expectation that they would return to Loyola in the spring semester with credits transferable back to Loyola. [Source: AJCU]
In response to Hurricane Katrina and the temporary closing of Jesuit High School in New Orleans, Jesuit high schools throughout the United States have offered to accept students from Jesuit High.
As of early September, 400 of the school's 700 students have been placed in other Jesuit schools, including Strake Jesuit College Prep in Houston, which has accepted 245 students.
Not only are the schools opening their doors to Jesuit High students, but they are also planning events to help the victims, including clothing drives, fund-raising, and offering to travel to New Orleans to help rebuild the school.
Fr Anthony McGinn SJ, Jesuit High's president who is operating from Strake, advised parents that students should go to any school they can. [Source: JSEA]
The New Orleans Province has set up a site for those interested in donating to hurricane relief efforts at www.norprov.org/news/katrinarelief.htm .
Jesuits from the Maryland Province celebrated the 200th anniversary of the restoration of the Jesuit order in the United States following a 30-year period of suppression during an August 27 anniversary Mass at St Ignatius Church in Port Tobacco. The church is the site where three priests professed their vows as Jesuits on August 18, 1805.
"We come together today not only to honor the restoration of the Society in the United States and the profession of vows of our forebears, but also to re-found the Society today," said Fr Timothy Brown SJ, provincial of the province and principal celebrant and homilist at the Mass.
A brief history of the restoration, written by Fr John LaMartina SJ, resident archivist for the province, notes that Pope Clement XIV wrote the Brief of Suppression in 1773 after being pressured by Catholic rulers who feared the growing popularity and power of the Jesuits.
Across Europe, Jesuits faced dismissal from service, removal of property, and even death. Countries with non-Catholic rulers including Russia and Prussia did not implement the order. In Colonial America, the 23 Jesuits in the Maryland Mission all signed the Act of Submission.
The Jesuit priests in Maryland became diocesan priests and worked for the restoration of the order. According to Fr LaMartina's brief history, the priests "held on to their possessions and property, which supported their work, and despite restrictions imposed by the penal laws remained at their mission posts."
On August 18, 1805, through permission of the order's superior general in Russia, three priests declared Jesuit vows at St Ignatius. Frs Robert Molyneux and Charles Sewall professed their simple vows, and Fr Charles Neale, who had been a novice in 1773, professed vows for the first time. The Society was restored worldwide in 1815. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
On Monday, August 29, Chicago Jesuit Academy opened for the first class day with 19 fifth-grade students. The full-scholarship nativity-style Jesuit middle school is for boys from modest economic backgrounds who live on the West Side of Chicago. The school has small class sizes, individualized instruction, and longer school days. [Source: Chicago Province Notices]
Chicago Jesuit Academy: www.cjacademy.org
Nativity School Network: www.nativitynetwork.org
Retreats have taken a new twist for younger participants; for example, Chicago's Charis Ministries, a Jesuit outreach to Catholic young adults, sponsors peace and justice weekends as a means to integrate social justice and faith issues with professional and work lives.
Fr Michael Sparough SJ, who started Charis five years ago and serves as its director, said young adult Catholics were failed by religious education in the post-Vatican II years.
"This generation was not acculturated into the Catholic Church," he told the US bishops' Subcommittee on Youth and Young Adults.
A survey conducted by the subcommittee from May to June of this year found that the Church's outreach to young adults spans a variety of activities and that the most popular programs included retreats, Theology on Tap programs, leadership training, and social activities.
Fr Sparough also noted that today's young adults are "disillusioned about every institution, including the Church."
"You get a generation that finds it very difficult to make a commitment, and puts a high premium on their own experience," he added.
That's one reason Charis events stress the importance of young adults sharing their faith experiences with their peers. The retreats catch people at an important moment in their lives, according to Eric and Amy Totten, who provided music for a recent Charis retreat. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Charis Ministries in on the web at www.jesuits.net/charis/
The 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the US received high scores in the latest issue of US News & World Report that ranks the nation's best colleges and universities.
In "America's Best Colleges 2006," seven Jesuit universities were listed among the top 248 national universities, with Georgetown University moving up two slots to #23, Fordham University moving up two slots to #68, and Marquette University moving up five slots to #85.
Twelve institutions were in the top 10 of the four regional categories (North, South, Midwest, and West) for Master's universities, with Creighton University keeping its first place ranking in the Midwest category. The only Jesuit liberal arts college, the College of the Holy Cross, was once again selected as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States.
Several Jesuit colleges and universities had the highest graduation rates in the country (Georgetown University, Boston College, Fordham University, Marquette University, Saint Louis University, University of San Francisco), and many qualified for several other categories in the rankings, including "Best Value" (Georgetown University, Boston College, Saint Louis University, and Loyola University Chicago) and "Highest Proportion of Classes under 20." [Source: AJCU]
Fr Thomas Smolich |
Fr Thomas Smolich SJ has been appointed the next president of the Jesuit Conference. He is expected to take office in June of 2006. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Jesuit Conference is the national liaison office coordinating the work of the ten Jesuit provinces in the United States. Fr Smolich is replacing Fr Bradley Schaeffer SJ, who is completing his term in office after becoming president in 1998.
Fr Smolich is completing a six-year term as the Provincial of the Jesuits of the California Province. He previously served as project manager at Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition, an affordable-housing developer in San Francisco, and as assistant for planning and programs in the province.
Fr James Grummer, SJ |
Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ has named Fr James Grummer SJ the Regional Assistant for the Jesuits in the United States, which also carries with it the role of General Counselor to the General. Fr Grummer previously served as socius and provincial of the Wisconsin Province; he will succeed Fr Francis Case SJ as the U.S. Assistant. Fr Case has been appointed to the position of Secretary of the Society. He will succeed Fr Gabriel Codina SJ. Most recently, Fr Case served as Regional Assistant for the United States for the past fifteen years (the position which Fr Grummer will be assuming.) |
Fr Frank Case, SJ |
The theory of evolution, rather than negating the need for God, helps believers understand that God's relationship to the universe is that of a nurturing parent, said Jesuit Fr George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.
But there is a "nagging fear in the Church" that evolution is incompatible with a divinely planned universe, and this fear has historically created "murky waters" in the Church's relationship to science, he said in a recent article in The Tablet, a London Catholic weekly.
The article criticized an article in the New York Times this past summer by Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The cardinal said that an "unplanned process of random variation and natural selection," both important parts of evolutionary thinking, are incompatible with Catholic belief that there is a divine purpose and design to nature.
In clarifying comments made afterward, Cardinal Schönborn said that evolution as a body of scientific fact was compatible with Catholicism, but that evolution as an ideological dogma that denied design and purpose in nature was not.
Fr Coyne said that science is "completely neutral" regarding the philosophical and theological implications of its findings, but this does not prevent believers from using the best scientific data available to improve their understanding of God.
Evolution is not only compatible with Catholicism but also "reveals a God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God," said Fr Coyne.
Fr Coyne criticized Cardinal Schönborn for saying that the scientific processes of "chance" and "necessity" cannot explain the presence of purpose and design in nature.
"Chance" and "necessity" are continuously interacting and must be understood as being tied to the scientific process of "fertility" by which the universe is constantly generating matter, Fr Coyne said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Patterned on the movements of the Spiritual Exercises, this September to May online experience is designed for busy people. It is a way to find intimacy with God in the midst of everyday life. Beginning the week of September 18, it fits with the liturgical year and can be made with a spiritual director, on one's own, or with a group. Available also in Japanese and Spanish. On the web at www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/retreat.html .
Br Rick Curry SJ was recently a "Person of the Week" on ABC News. The segment noted that Br Curry is founder of the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped. To read the transcript or view the segment, go to abcnews.go.com/WNT/PersonOfWeek/story?id=1012860&page=1
All the main presentations and 18 of the workshops from this past summer's Ignatian Spirituality Conference at Saint Louis University were recorded and are available in audio cassette and CD form from MJB Communications at www.mjbcomm.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=MCBT&Category_Code=019 .
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